I am especially a fan of the prenasalized unvoiced stops. Is the prenasalization voiceless? If/when the prenasals occur intervocalically are they voiced? I just think the stops are lovely as hell.

I'm not great at reproducing clicks though I try. I'm absolute trash at reproducing aspirated v. non-aspirated distinction on clicks consistently but I do like the phonaesthetic of it. Your vowel system is a gem too. I am a sucker for a back unrounded vowel.

Notably there will be phonation affecting some of these tones as well, I suspect the low peaking tone /˩˧˩/ will also involve creaky voice as will most long low-tone vowels. I need to determine this a bit more. I may also utilize breathy voice but some more thought will need to go into this.

Despite the intense tonal system I would still like words to be longer than monosyllables. Ideally, most words would be either mono- or bisyllabic with an extremely small few being trisyllabic.

I am especially a fan of the prenasalized unvoiced stops. Is the prenasalization voiceless? If/when the prenasals occur intervocalically are they voiced? I just think the stops are lovely as hell.

I'm not great at reproducing clicks though I try. I'm absolute trash at reproducing aspirated v. non-aspirated distinction on clicks consistently but I do like the phonaesthetic of it. Your vowel system is a gem too. I am a sucker for a back unrounded vowel.

Thanks. The Language has its own thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6684. I took Eroki Gǂama and reversed engineered the proto-lang, which had voiced stops (plain and prenasalized) voiced and voiced nasal clicks (Tone indicates original voicing, though intervocal /d/ with the first vowel being /i/ or /i:/ became /ɾ/.). The stops also had an ejective series, which all fused into /ʔ/ (In Eroki Gǂama they became voiced) The vowel inventory was pretty much the short vowels here, but with length and LOADS of diphthongs, which mostly resolved
into /y: ɯ: e: o:/

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
-JRR Tolkien

The lateral is generally pronounced voiced only when intervocalic, before a glide or when geminated (though some speakers realise this last one as a single intervocalic voiceless fricative).

/i/
/e o/
/a/
/eo/

The vowels and the diphthong come in long and short.

Phonotactics are fairly simple. Syllable structure is CV(C), where all consonants other than /j/ can occur in the coda, though with some restrictions on intervocalic clusters. In particular the clusters /ln/ and /tn/ assimilate to /ll/ and /n/ respectively, while geminate obstruents (other than /ll/) are degeminated.

Stress is rigidly penultimate, however there are three accent patterns that can occur over the final two syllables; high on the penultimate/low on the ultimate, low on the penultimate/high on the ultimate and rising on the penultimate/falling on the ultimate.

Last edited by Frislander on 10 Jun 2018 17:14, edited 1 time in total.

I was toying around with a hyper-strange and smaller inventory too. I like this a lot actually.

The sheer number of labials is staggering. I'd like to think dialects diverging and daughters of this language generating weird back-only vowel systems that have either /u o ɒ/ and then some of the other siblangs would have /ɯ u ɤ o ɑ ɒ/.

The advanced dorsals as palatalised to varying extents depending on adjacent vowels, with the greatest degree of palatalisation being seen between two front vowels. Similarly, the retracted dorsals are most uvularised between two back vowels.

/i u/ <i u>
/iə uə/ <ie ue>
/ɛ œ ɔ/ <e oe o>
/a/ <a>

Syllable structure is CV(C), where the coda C is restricted to /ʔ s ħ m n ɣ̟ ɣ̠/. After front vowels /i ɛ œ/ the advanced velar approximant is generally realised as lengthening of the vowel, while after other vowels it is the retracted velar that is so realised. The diphthongs /iə uə/ are never so lengthened.

Roots are either vowel- or consonant-final, with only a restricted set of consonants /t k̟ k̠ s ħ m n/, and where before consonants/word-finally the /t/ is debuccalised and the dorsal stops are lenited to approximants.

....
The lateral is generally pronounced voiceless only when intervocalic, before a glide or when geminated (though some speakers realise this last one as a single intervocalic voiceless fricative).
....
The vowels and the diphthong come in long and short.

Phonotactics are fairly simple. Syllable structure is CV(C), where all consonants other than /j/ can occur in the coda, though with some restrictions on intervocalic clusters. In particular the clusters /ln/ and /tn/ assimilate to /ll/ and /n/ respectively, while geminate obstruents (other than /ll/) are degeminated.

Stress is rigidly penultimate, however there are three accent patterns that can occur over the final two syllables; high on the penultimate/low on the ultimate, low on the penultimate/high on the ultimate and rising on the penultimate/falling on the ultimate.

Some have long vowels, and some have diphthongs, but I’ve never seen a natlang vowel inventory that had both phonemic short vowels and phonemic long vowels, and also had both phonemic monophthongs and phonemic diphthongs; much less long diphthong phonemes. (Nor even long diphthongs that aren’t phonemes.)

Is, for instance, [a:i] or [ai:] or [a:i:] likelier? Does any natlang have two of them?
How about two or all three of [a:u] or [au:] or [a:u:]?
Etc.

If these things occur only in conlangs, that’s fine; but I still can’t imagine what they sound like.
Think you could post a link to a recording?